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Nvidia shows videos of new real-time fracture engine

Nvidia has released two new demo videos of its work-in-progress fracturing engine at GDC 2012.

Rather than using pre-fracturing, the system determines the pattern of breakage according to the intensity and location of the force applied. The engine is GPU-based: according to Nvidia, the demo scene above runs at 40fps “until the end rendering” on a GeForce GTX 480 high-end gaming card.

A second video (immediately above) shows the engine in action with non-convex geometry. The results are nice, but seem to have been simulated for low gravity, making it look as if everything is moving underwater.

Nvidia says that the work will be incorporated into its APEX physics framework.